


as small as a world and as large as alone

by kototyph



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Righteous Man!Castiel, angel!Sam, angel!dean
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-24
Updated: 2012-10-23
Packaged: 2017-11-16 22:30:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/544552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kototyph/pseuds/kototyph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two angels walk into a bar. One says, ‘Did you hear the one about the Righteous Man? They say he’s drawing blood in hell.’</p>
            </blockquote>





	as small as a world and as large as alone

**Author's Note:**

> Summary #2, from [this post](http://kototyph.tumblr.com/post/21279134862/so-i-got-all-excited-because-everyone-is-doing): “So I got all excited because everyone is doing angel!Dean and hunter!Cas and I wanted to do it too and so I did and now it’s all scary and depressing and everything is horrible.”

Dean’s sitting in a dive bar somewhere in the ass-end of Detroit, drinking cheap mescal and wondering if it might be time for a little south-of-the-border vacation. It’s pissing down rain outside, the streets grey and slick with it, and Tijuana is sounding better and better the longer it takes cold, wet April to warm into blushing May.

The bar is quiet, cracked vinyl booths mostly empty and flickering neon illuminating only one or two couples as they slow dance across the sticky linoleum. It’s a Tuesday night and he could be in any one of a thousand places just like this one—they all have the same hard edges, soft darkness, stale air and pungent smells. More than cheap perfume and sour beer, though, they reek of despair; despair, and a grasping sort of loneliness that’s desperate to latch on to someone,  _anyone_ , as long as a spark of common humanity can be found in their eyes.

There’s a girl in the corner who’s got that look, thin and wan with the scared-stiff posture of a rabbit who hears the hawk’s wings. She glances up again, sees that Dean’s still blatantly staring, and ducks her head, twisting the label she’s pulled off her Budweiser between shaking fingers. She’s not old enough to drink. She hardly looks old enough to drive. Her soul is so intensely beautiful that it hurts even his true eyes to behold it.

Dean wonders if she’d like to go to Mexico.

“One of Haniel’s vessels, I think,” says the man at his elbow, where no one sat half a second before. “Pretty little thing. Just look at that lightshow.”

Dean turns in his seat, raising an eyebrow at the lined face and grizzled beard of his sudden companion. “Yeah, I’d say little Hanners won the genetics lottery. Especially compared to you, ‘Bobby’,” he reads, the name sewn into the lapel of greasy blue coveralls.

‘Bobby’ glares. “Smartass. Do you know how few of my vessels are left on earth?  _Three._  And two ain’t breeding. This old drunk is the only one left in the States.”

“My heart bleeds, Bobby. Really.”

“Look, Mi—”

“Dean.”

“Look,  _Dean_ ,” Bobby growls, drawing his paunchy borrowed body up to its full, wholly unimpressive height. “I come bearing tidings of great sorrow.”

“I thought annunciation was Jibrail’s gig,” Dean mutters, tipping back the last of his sour mescal.

“You tell me where to find the little asshat and I’ll be sure to tell him,” Bobby snaps. “It falls to me to report to God’s Holy Sword that the Righteous Man has entered hell.”

“Which one? You can’t throw a rock and not hit a righteous man in Abaddon,” Dean says bitterly, and motions the bartender to refill his glass.

Bobby’s gaze hold steady. “He is the Righteous Man who will draw blood and begin the end times. Everything is falling into place.”

“That’s impossible,” Dean says flatly, watching the liquid spill and swirl. “I would know.”

“Would you?” Bobby asks. “Would you really? Been checking in with the Host pretty regular, ‘Dean’? ‘Cause I gotta tell you, Israfel and Zechariah have stopped even pretending to be following your orders.”

“I would  _know_ ,” Dean says again, “because Our Father would have told me—”

“Mikhail,” Bobby says, and drops all accent and pretense. The man in grease-streaked coveralls becomes the Angel of the Garden, and his eyes hold Grief and Resolve. “How is Your Father to reach you, when you have so tightly closed yourself off from Him?”

“Does He speak to you?” Dean demands, turning to him. “Brother, does He speak?”

The angel wearing the drunk named Bobby regards Dean solemnly.

“Does. He. Speak?” Dean bites out. The lights start to flicker.

“No,” Bobby says quietly. “He does not.”

Dean shoves away from the bar so violently that it rocks loose of the floor, wood splintering and bottles crashing to the floor. “Sam’s not ready!” he snarls, his voice breaking into registers that crack the neon and shatter windows. The sparse crowd is screaming, hands over their heads to protect themselves from falling glass and the awful noise. “I  _will not_  let this happen!”

“You can’t stop it, Dean,” Bobby says, unmoved, lapsing back into his vessel’s Midwestern drawl. “What’s been set in motion is beyond even you.”

“We’ll see,” is tossed over his shoulder, and a wind sweeps through the bar, sending splinters and shards whistling through the air.

When the dust settles and the screaming stops, Dean and Bobby are gone.

Under the pool table in the corner, Anna Milton crouches with her threadbare jacket pulled up over her head. She’s trying not to sob, but it feels like a lost effort when the tears have come anyway, burning trails going cold on her cheeks.  

She wonders, as the yelling and shrieking around her dies, what the creature staring across the bar at her had been. Ghoul? Shapeshifter? Siren? Her brothers would have known. If she were brave, like Castiel, or as reckless as Lucem, perhaps she would have charged after the thing, shot it full of silver plate and salt rounds until it stopped mocking her with Michael’s face. Her Browning is in her pocket, her weapons in the rucksack at her side. She could do it.

But Anna is not brave, or reckless. Lucem is gone and Castiel is dead, just as dead as Michael— no matter what walks around wearing his skin— and Anna—

Anna is alone.


End file.
